Transgenderism has been said to bring “chaos from order.” And we see this repeatedly and ever more frequently in today’s society. Medical experts like psychiatrist Paul McHugh tell us:
Policy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment, and prevention. This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken—it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.
But in today’s twisted society, sexual tolerance repeatedly trumps truth.
Springfield, Illinois, Catholic bishop Thomas John Paprocki has weighed in on this subject, saying in part:
The Catholic Church has some clear teachings on transgender issues. Catholics are called to treat everyone with compassion. Yet the church maintains that people may not change what Pope Benedict XVI called “their very essence.” In a speech at the Vatican on Dec. 23, 2008, Benedict directly addressed transgender issues by cautioning Catholics about “destroying the very essence of the human creature through manipulating their God-given gender to suit their sexual choices.” . . .
Here in the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, we ask that people respect these teachings of the Catholic Church in their use of facilities in our churches and schools. People who are confused about their gender identity—especially children and adolescents—should be treated with compassion and provided counseling rather than being further confused by activists promoting their political ideology.
In issuing this profoundly sensible statement, Bishop Paprocki has taken the opportunity to teach his flock the basics of mercy and respect for the human person. We thank him for this.
Moving to the next evil in our midst, we visit the subject of distortions—lies created to help the abortion industry retain a modicum of respectability by marginalizing those who have exposed its deadly reality.
In the particular case at hand, we are talking about Planned Parenthood’s recently sponsored bill in the California legislature, AB 1671, designed to criminalize so-called covert investigations of healthcare providers. In other words, the bill is designed to punish the heroes and heroines of truth-telling—folks like David Daleiden and Lila Rose—while exonerating the killers and baby body parts sellers in our midst. As Rose has so eloquently stated, “If this bill were to become law, it criminalizes even media who is reporting on and disseminating in any way that footage. . . . So it’s basically a freeze on the freedom of speech, and freedom of the press in California, if this bill goes into law.”
Fortunately, the California Catholic Conference and the California Newspaper Publishers Association are opposing this bill, and for that we are extremely grateful. Sandra Palacios, associate director for Governmental Relations for the California Catholic Conference, which represents all of the Catholic bishops in that state, remarked, “As has been frequently demonstrated in the past, by both news media and private organizations, undercover investigations, or those done in open and public spaces, are sometimes necessary in order to expose little known truths and to uncover important facts that our society deserves to have disseminated for public review and debate.”
Planned Parenthood’s efforts in the California legislature to squash free speech among the media MUST fail!
The third and final evil of the day is the political fact that during an election season many attempt to relegate abortion and euthanasia to a category where they are just a couple of issues among many others that should be given equal weight by the voter. Jose Gomez, archbishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, warns us to use caution. In a timely editorial published in the archdiocesan newspaper, he writes that “the hard truth is that not all injustices in the world are ‘equal.’” He goes on to tell readers that there are indeed “lesser” evils, which “means there are also ‘greater’ evils—evils that are more serious than others and even some evils that are so grave that Christians are called to address them as a primary duty.” He articulates that “abortion and euthanasia are different and stand alone. . . . But evils and injustices committed behind closed doors are still evil and unjust and are never only personal.”
American Life League thanks courageous bishops like Paprocki, Gomez, and the entire California Catholic Conference for standing up and calling evil what it is. God bless them, one and all.
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Combat the evil with truth! Join American Life League in defiance of the culture of our day—this culture of death. Through your actions and words, become a part of our movement to build a culture of life. Pray, be informed, and educate others.
For pro-life information, go to all.org.
For pro-life educational tools designed for classrooms and home schooling, RCIA, and more, visit cultureoflifestudies.com.
To see documented proof of Planned Parenthood’s debauchery and to learn ways to stop its spread, go to stopp.org.
To join with youth outreach for a pro-life generation, go to lifedefender.org.
For information on America’s only pro-life high school, Saint Michael the Archangel, visit saintmichaelhs.org.